


hand and bone

by EJsPJs



Category: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Genre: F/F, Girls Kissing, Other, SO MUCH TEA, Tea, apparently, because girls are amazing, except with lesbians, it's totally a thing, just watch ghost, sexy pottery making
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-19 00:25:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15498180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EJsPJs/pseuds/EJsPJs
Summary: In a culture where bare hands are taboo, I wondered what the implications of drinking tea from handmade cups where the potter chose to not wear gloves would be. And so this happened.





	hand and bone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thelittlestdoc](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelittlestdoc/gifts), [ships_to_sail](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ships_to_sail/gifts).



> Thank you to thelittlestdoc who talked about the Yuletide gift exchange and made writing sound like it could be fun for the first time ever. I missed Yule by a long shot but the seed of this started there and it definitely was fun. And to ships_to_sail whose enthusiasm for fandom and joyful things gives me life and who kept talking about writing things in a way that didn't sound stressful. You are both wonderful enablers.

"The creation of a piece of fine china," Elkit recited, "is far more complex than most people realise." 

"The selection, wedging and preparation of the clay are each something of an art form in themselves." As she spoke she seated herself at the demonstration wheel, scooped up one of the prepared lumps of clay from the heaped bucket and threw it deftly down into the centre of the wheel. 

"Today I am only introducing you to throwing process for shaping clay but you must always bear in mind that the processes before and after throwing will also affect the finished item. If today piques your interest then the studio runs full introductory courses every few months." She dipped her gloved hands in the water bowl and finally looked up to meet the eyes of her audience. They were rapt and attentive; children at the feet of a master. Better, she thought, than the hungry, considering looks she had received at the demonstration on Helstrisia station. Too many rich patrons keen only to be seen to own a Vorneriaa original or to be associated with Elkit Vorneriaa herself. Nobody here at least looked likely to ask her if she was going to take her gloves off, to make a truly _authentic_ Vorneriaa piece. 

"Let’s begin." As the wheel began to spin Elkit brought her black gloved hands softly down to meet the clay and began its transformation into art. 

\------

As the last of her audience filed out Elkit sighed and stretched out her back. Hath bustled back through the studio doors and began reinstating some order in the jumble of floor cushions and stools the audience had been using, humming quietly to herself. Elkit scrutinized the tea bowl on the wheel before her, its sides curving gently outward in fluidly spiraling ridges to a slender lip. With a simple glaze it would offer understated elegance to any tea ceremony. She brought her hand down gently and crumpled the still wet clay back into formlessness before scooping it into the slip bucket and returning her focus to the empty wheel. 

“I still don’t know why you don’t just fire the demonstration pieces. That was a perfectly fine bowl.” Hath’s voice cut through Elkit’s quiet contemplation and she scowled across the room. 

“If you want a perfectly fine tea bowl you can get one factory made. I don’t--” Elkit trailed off as she saw the laughter bubbling up in Hath’s face. 

“You don’t make perfectly fine things. You make art.” Hath teased. Elkit smiled as her partner shuffled around the buckets of clay to stroke her hair and kiss her forehead. “You are a genius of the highest order and your scandalous china is a monument to your great brain.” 

“Don’t mock me woman, people would kill for my scandalous china.” Elkit pulled Hath down onto her lap and kissed her. Hath’s lips were soft and warm and Elkit dipped her backwards, deepening the kiss, sliding one hand up into her hair. 

“Kit. Kit!” Hath called breathlessly between kisses. 

“Mmmm?” Elkit moved her lips down to Hath’s neck where she loved to be kissed. 

“Kit,” she gasped, “I love you but you’ve still got your gloves on and I am now covered in clay.” 

Elkit stopped kissing Hath’s neck long enough to glance across her body and saw that her shirt and the other side of her neck were now both generously streaked with porcelain pale residue, stark against her dark skin. 

“Shit, sorry!.” She pulled Hath back upright and tried to move away. But Hath gripped her shoulders and pulled her forwards into a filthy open-mouthed kiss. Elkit clenched her hands in an effort to not cover Hath in yet more clay and whimpered into her mouth. 

“Take the gloves off you idiot, and touch me.” Hath commanded. 

Without relinquishing Hath’s mouth Elkit reached behind her and stripped the gloves off her hands before taking a firm grip under Hath’s thighs and lifting her up and pushing her way through the buckets and bowls of clay and water. 

“This is why I don’t fire the demonstration pieces,” she whispered between kisses as she carried Hath to the floor cushions. 

“What?” Hath gasped as she lay back, curls spilling across the floor. 

“The gloves. The pieces are only real when I make them without gloves on. Touch connects us, I want my pieces to connect people. To feel this connection, to remember it every time they take a sip.” Elkit stroked Hath’s face as she lay above her, “I touch the bowl, I shape it with my body, my experiences.” She dragged her thumb across Hath’s lower lip, watching intently, and then slid it to touch her tongue, her breath beginning to shake. “They drink from it, I touch them.” She leant down and kissed Hath. 

\---

Breq always enjoyed the pleasure One Kalr Five took from the ship’s complement of china. The selection of the day’s tea service unerringly reflected the mood of the crew, the mission, the moment. The pointed use of the second best tea bowls for the Athoek station manager, still far more rare and precious than anything the manager would have seen this far out in the system, was a perfectly crafted display of power and disdain. A multilayered fuck you in the form of exquisite thousand year old porcelain. 

Breq’s own enjoyment of the china was clearly evident to Kalr Five as well, as she began to serve Breq tea in new pieces she had found in her latest exploration of the warehouses and shops of the stations they visited. Each new tea pot and bowl was reverently filled and served to Breq alone before being used on other occassions, as though seeking her approval, her blessing. After her time as a goddess Breq was familiar with providing benedictions and her expressions of pleasure and interest seemed to please One Kalr Five as well as blood and lotus blossoms ever had. 

“And your tea, captain.” One Kalr Five bowed and retreated to the doorway as Breq looked speculatively down at the service and smiled quietly to herself. 

“This is new.” She gestured at the tea bowl, a simple white curved shape but made of bone chine of such fineness that the light shone through its pale walls to reflect off the pure gold that lined the base and illuminating the pale green tea so that it seemed to shine with its own quiet light. 

“The crate it was in was labelled from Hinverth Three, it’s renowned for some of the finest bone china in the nearby systems.” 

Breq remembered Hinverth, a huge blue planet ringed with long green archipelago and a tradition of sung history that had provided Breq with some satisfying new pieces. She began to hum quietly to herself, smiling as Kalr Five continued to extol the virtues of Hinverth china. 

“I’ll leave you to your tea, Sir.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant. A beautiful find.” Kalr Five ducked her head, pleased, as she left Breq’s compartment. 

“She is particularly excited about this one,” the ship murmured to Breq, “her heartbeat was almost fast enough to warrant concern.” 

“It’s a Vorneriaa. The tea bowl. They’re very rare.” Breq replied silently. 

“A kissing cup? Surely the Lieutenant does not have such intentions towards you. That is most inappropriate. And on today of all days.” Breq wasn’t sure if the Ship was more put out that Lieutenant Kalr Five would make such a move today or that she could have done so without ship noticing. 

“It’s not about her, it’s a memorial, I think. For the Justice of Toren and for Aw-, for those who died.”

The ships disbelief was clear in the silence. Breq sighed. 

“Vorneriaa always said the her work was about connections, kindling them and remembering them. Of course once the name kissing cups stuck people tended only to remember that they were used suggestively and forgot the element of memory, of connections and touches past.”

Breq contemplated the cup for a moment and then slowly removed her uniform gloves. She picked up the cup gently and drank her tea. Before she returned the bowl to the table she brushed her thumb slowly across the tiny, almost unnoticeable ripples in the rim where it had touched her mouth. An imprint of another thumb made hundreds of years ago. Breq put the cup down and stroked her thumb across her her lip. 

“I think,” she said carefully, “that it might be appropriate to invite Awn Elming for tea this evening.”


End file.
